Eavesdropping on Evie, Gracie cackled like Roark’s voodoo queen at her sister’s absurd accent.
“Ma’am, I just need the card number. This is a very serious situation. You could be sent back to... where you came from if you don’t pay this bill. What is the expiration date on the card?”
“Send back to Califolnia?” Evie asked excitedly. “Yes, yes, my sister theah. I go.”
Gracie practically rolled on the floor. At the other end of the table, Pris sounded as if she might be having an orgasm. The men in the room watched with interest, except Reuben. The professor was still industriously bent over the project Evie had given him.
“Asia, ma’am. We’ll have to send you out of America if you can’t pay your bills. What is the expiration date on the card?”
“Asia?” Evie tried to sound wistful. “Not since rittle gir.” Really, she couldn’t keep making up this accent. They needed to find people who could fake it. “Don know no one no moah.”
“Just read me the date from the card, ma’am.” He sounded as if he might be tiring of the game. That was the problem with crooks these days, no stamina, no perseverance.
Jax came over to massage her shoulders. Evie stretched. She’d love doing this more if she could catch the jerkwad.
“I know,” she said excitedly, inspired by Jax’s massage. “You call my flend from glocely. She give you cahd numbah. And I go Carifolnia!”
“Just give me your friend’s number.” He barely hid his triumph.
“No, no, she not answer.” Evie had grabbed Jax’s phone and was hastily looking up grocery stores in Roark’s hometown. Hah, Shop-Rite. “She only answer call from Shop-lite. She got Zoom. I give her cahd to lead.”
“Shop-Rite?” the voice asked dubiously.
“Yes. Her son work Shop-lite. She don’ answer no strange numbah. I Zoom-zoom show her cahd. You call from glocely. She read numbah. I go Carifolnia.” Evie thought she’d mispronounced the state three different ways by now.
“Shop-Rite, okay. Give me your friend’s number.”
Jax signaled Roark, who scribbled down a phone number.
Evie rattled off Roark’s number, and crowing over her imaginary visit to the coast, hung up with regret. “I didn’t get to hex him.”
“If he has half a brain, he’ll use a VPN to show Shop-Rite calling.” Roark was already punching numbers into his cell. “But just in case, I’ll file a complaint and see if they’ll pick up the good ol’ boy at the grocery. Good try. He’ll be occupied doing one or the other for a while.”
Another phone rang and he wandered off, still texting his official contact.
Pris turned her phone on speaker and the witch cackled at the other end of the line. Everyone in the room spontaneously cheered, and Gracie shouted “Score!”
And the race was on.
* * *
Ariel watchedwith glee as Roark’s witch app sucked money out of Whiteside Fishing and back into the victim accounts the scammers had been robbing. Numbers fascinated her, so she’d fallen into her line of work accidentally, not because she was motivated by justice, like Jax.
So even though she knew what Roark was doing was illegal—the justice of stealing from thieves, then rendering their phones useless, brought unmitigated delight. So much so that she checked into the fake social media account Roark had established for his family to see if anyone was talking about the witch’s curse.
She rocked in her chair and grinned as the first reports popped up—not from the phones that the witch had frozen, of course. But friends and family complained that their messages weren’t being answered. Then when it became apparent a whole lot of phones weren’t being answered, there was a brief flurry of panic. Followed by a lot of acronyms and emojis indicating frustration and fury.
And then, mysteriously, one by one, each of his family’s social media accounts shut down. The chatter fell silent. Was his whole family in on the fraud? And nowalltheir phones were frozen? They had no other computers?
She texted Evie to ask what was happening.
Evie replied a few minutes later with a video.
Roark was in front of a giant whiteboard scribbled with names, some of whom Ariel recognized as Evie’s family. Like a giant scoreboard, each name had marks beside it, some more than others. Pris was busily turning the marks into exclamation points and stars while Roark screamed “Booyah!” and added still another point. If each point represented a phone, they’d taken out a whole lot of scammers today.
The entire room seemed to be screaming in joy and dancing around the long conference table. Even as Ariel watched, music began to play and a conga line formed. She was startled to watch joyless Jax grab Evie and tug her into the dance. Who was holding the camera now?
Reuben’s face popped into view. “He did it, kid. Check the bank, then get out and clean your trail. The cops are moving into Whitesville as we speak.”